The role of Bioeconomy in the Czech national forest strategy: a comparison with Sweden

Abstract

The 2012 European Bioeconomy Strategy has been adopted in some European countries' national policies. However, it has not been officially included in the Czech Republic's national policy. In Sweden, the Bioeconomy Strategy has been adopted in the national policy and the National Forest Programme (NFP). The paper reviews the current forest policy in the Czech Republic in meeting the purposes of the forestbased bioeconomy by performing a comparative study between the Czech Republic and Sweden. As bioeconomy principles are core values in the Swedish NFP it aims not only to deliver sustainable forest products and ecosystem services to support forest enterprises but also to achieve a fossil-fuel-free Sweden. Although the Czech Forest Policy denotes the European Bioeconomy Strategy as one of the reference documents, it does not directly relate to shifting from fossil fuels to bioenergy. The implementation of the Czech document is limited to the forest-based sector. Bioeconomy principles are expected to be included in inter-ministerial committees at the government level in the Czech Republic. The challenges faced by the country include fulfilling the provision of sustainable forest biomass and high added-value products while harmonising forest policies and regulations.

Sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services in protected areas: A study applied to Southeast Spain

“…Within the cultural category, 'Aesthetic values of the environment' is one of the highest rated ESs, as in other studies in China (Hochmalová et al, 2022), Malaysia (Jamean & Abas, 2023) or Iran (Dehghani Pour et al, 2023). This differs from the results obtained by Purwestri et al (2023) in the Czech Republic, which may be due to the fact that the forests there are being subjected to prolonged drought, low rainfall and high temperatures.…”

Substituting Solid Fossil Fuels with Torrefied Timber Products

“…These lowered the natural resilience of trees and simultaneously provided favourable conditions for propagation of the bark beetle (Ips typographus), a typical secondary disturbance agent, which targets drought-stressed or otherwise vulnerable Norway spruce trees [44]. Combined with factors that hindered the ability of Czech foresters to act quickly (e.g., the regulatory framework and operational factors), Czechia experienced multiple years when the volume of harvested timber exceeded typical volumes by a factor of two [45]. For example, in the year 2018, the volume of salvage-logged timber exceeded 23 million m 3 [46], i.e., 90% of the total harvests of 25.69 million m 3 [47].…”

Assessing Bioeconomy Development Opportunities in the Latvian Policy Planning Framework

“…National action plans for the governance of bioresources aligned with international targets could ease food and energy supply risks, promote more rational and efficient use of bioresources, and prevent rapid and unpredictable inflation in Latvia and across the EU [5]. It is essential to identify whether Latvia's policy planning documents are coherent regarding the internal and external policy domains of bioeconomy development opportunities [4,8,9]. Whether the implementation of the overall strategic vision of bioeconomy development is following a top-down approach and maintains coherence at all levels is therefore important to identify [10,11].…”

“…Objectives of the Latvian Bioeconomy Strategy 2030[25] (pp [5][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”